\ Posted on 12/22/2021 11:15:53 AM PST by Red Badger
\
'Tis the season when people bring a tree indoors and apparently discover they are harboring praying mantis eggs.
According to a Facebook post by Officials in Erie County, Ohio, that is once again being spread around the Internet, if you see a strange walnut-like growth on the tree, you should not bring it indoors.
"PSA: If you happen to see a walnut-sized/shaped egg mass, on your Christmas tree, don’t fret, clip the branch and put it in your garden. These are 100-200 praying mantis eggs!" they wrote in the post. "Don’t bring them inside they will hatch and starve!"
This advice, of course, applies only to people living in areas with praying mantises.
The danger is to the praying mantises themselves. The creatures are quite harmless to anyone other than their prey, which we — thankfully — are not.
They are unlikely to pose any danger to humans, even with their rare, venomless bites, and do not carry disease.
The mantis, meanwhile, would be in serious danger of a lack of food were they to find themselves transported into a nice, cozy, insect-free living room for Christmas. Ohio officials suggest that you just cut off the branch and place it outside, before you witness up to 200 praying mantises crawling out of their eggs.
So if you see these growths on the tree, as the officials suggest, please do not bring them indoors.
video at link......................
Why?
Let them out and spread them around to take care of the real pests in your garden.
preying mantis eggs... thousands of them will hatch. they are federally protected. do not kill them... they will eat every other bug in your house. in spring, leave the windows open and they will leave.
my dad, an arborist for the city of baltimore, trimmed some thorny bushes and found some sacks among the clippings. He forgot them in his truck and the sun warmed them and they hatched in the winter... thousands of babies in his truck... it was like a miniature jurassic park.
I agree.
I was mostly being facetious - they are certainly better left outside.
Just saying that if they hatch inside it’s not a big deal - as the headline suggested.
I found one of those nesti g in my compost bin. A baby.
Only when there are Hummingbirds around. Preying Mantis are really cool insects.
Organizations will pay good money for those things. I know a fellow who goes into fields of trees that were clear cut a couple of years ago. He collects all of them and sends someplace in the far West for cash.
Most species of praying mantises are not big enough to kill a hummingbird. There is one exception that I know of where the female is large enough, and has been photographed in the act, but seldom does so since there is so much other prey available.
There is an invasive Chinese mantis species established in the US and if memory serves, that is the one that is large enough to capture a hummingbird.
Free kitty! I had a pet one.
I had 4-5 hummingbird feeders hanging off wood planks & one day I saw a hummer hanging upside down in a bush underneath my feeders. Saw that 6” mantis were hanging off my feeders trying catch them. Started researching and they’re are videos on it.
I removed the boards and replaced with metal hangers and the problem stopped. I had so many hummingbirds, I took a picture and sent to an expert and based on the number in the photo, they estimated we had 2-300. They were going through about a gallon of sugar water everyday.
See my post #30.
Added a link to our thread. Thanks!
The same advice applies to neighbors you may be thinking of inviting over.
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